Book Review: Miracles

by Allison Jones

 

C.S. Lewis is famous for his books on Christian theology and philosophy such as Mere Christianity.  He presents arguments and ideas such that anyone can understand them instead of only those who study the topic in depth.  In this book Lewis addresses the question of miracles.  

He begins with defining what a miracle is and whether reality is such that they are possible.  A miracle is when something from outside of nature interferes with it, those things that do not arise out of the interlocking system of cause and effect that stretches back to the beginning of existence.  “The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern.”  The question that follows is: is there anything outside of nature?  Are miracles even possible?

“What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience.”  The two philosophies Lewis discusses are Naturalism and Supernaturalism.  The existence of miracles depends on the existence of some reality other than Nature and the interference with that supernatural reality with our familiar natural reality.  Lewis argues that in order for our thought and reason to be valid, it must derive from a supernatural source; else there is no reason to believe that our reasoning can arrive at truth.  He says, “It follows that no account of the universe can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight.”

Miracles require a God who actually acts, chooses, and is a person.  It is possible to believe in a higher supernatural reality but one that never interacts with Nature.  Lewis argues that thought and reason show that Nature is being interacted with, thus there must be some entity doing the interfering.  This God is one that occasionally reaches into nature and adds some new action and that all miracles he performs relate somehow to the greatest miracle of the Incarnation.  

Because it is a being, doing the interfering, all miracles have a purpose, they are not random.  Miracles occur for spiritually significant reasons.  While most of us will never witness one, most of us will also not be witnesses to historically or politically important events either.  That is not a reason to believe that such events do not occur.  But the people who did witness such occurrences did not necessarily know how the effect was achieved and the descriptions may be odd to modern people, we must keep in mind what the purpose of the miracle and its description was.  

Miracles contains thoughts on more than just miraculous occurrences, including the nature of God and how we learn about him as well as the nature of reality and reason.  Lewis keeps his arguments to ideas he knows something about and they are easy to follow, he does not skip too quickly to his conclusions.  If one is already well versed in these topics one may think that he goes too slowly and not deeply enough.  Like his other books, Miracles serves as a thorough introduction to the topic, but you must continue to other treatises if you desire to go even deeper into the topic.